Silk Road Icon · Stamped Wheat Bread
Samarqand Non
Photo: Yoshi Canopus / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
Legend holds that bakers ordered to reproduce Samarqand's bread elsewhere in the empire could never get it quite right using the same recipe and flour — and a properly baked loaf reportedly can be dried and kept edible for months without molding.
Samarqand non is baked thicker and heavier than bread from other Uzbek cities, with a glossy, smooth crust stamped with a sesame-flecked center and a dense crumb famous for staying edible far longer than typical tandoor bread. Bakers sell it piled in towers at Siyob Bazaar, right beside the Registan.
Why it's made this way: Its unusual keeping quality made it practical travel food for Silk Road caravans, and the bread became so tied to civic pride that Samarqand's identity as a baking capital survives in local legends about its recipe resisting replication elsewhere.
More from Uzbekistan
🥒
Chalop
Plov (Osh/Palov)
Samsa (سمسا)
Non (Uzbek Tandoor Bread)
Shashlik (Шашлык)
🍚
Samarqand Oshi (Layered Plov)
Plov (Osh/Palov)
Samsa (سمسا)
Non (Uzbek Tandoor Bread)
Shashlik (Шашлык)
🍚
Samarqand Oshi (Layered Plov)
Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below.
Photo credits.